Rejection
by SilverChrysanth
Summary: It can be lonely being a half-ghost. Especially if you're a clone of one. Sometimes, in order to truly understand something, you have to experience it.


_Written for the Writers Anonymous One-Word Prompt Challenge, No. 60, titled "Rejection."_

 _Word count: 2,135_

* * *

Stars peeked out from the sky, and the moon shone on the world. It was full and bright, but it wasn't enough to counter the glowing-green energy blasting around one tiny corner of the small town of Amity Park. It was coming from the town dump, away from prying eyes and ears, human or otherwise.

The cause of the blasts was a young, half-human and half-ghost hybrid named Dani. And currently, she wasn't very happy. Her energy blasts, more commonly referred to as ghost rays, flew from both her stretched palms at everything in sight, whether it was plastic, metal, or wood. She hardly paused in her destruction, hammering away until all she could see was green. Nothing was spared, and only the fence around the perimeter prevented her from going beyond the dump into the town.

Scanning the area for something else to hit, Dani spied an old, burnt-colored car behind a trash pile, collecting dirt and rust like a coat of paint. She lifted both arms, took aim, and the force of the concentrated blast sent it flying through the air, the farthest she'd thrown anything there. She took a few seconds to breathe, looking around for the first time at the damage she'd caused. And then a sharp breath of ice puffed out from her lungs, and she spun around at the new presence.

"Dani?" Danny Phantom, her older cousin, asked. His arms were folded across his chest, and he floated several feet off the ground. He was frowning at her.

"Danny," the younger hybrid said slowly, her fury draining to be replaced by surprise. "Hi."

"What are you doing?" He asked, although he could clearly see what she had been doing, having probably flown down from the sky.

"I'm training," Dani said. One of her cousin's eyebrows rose.

"Training, huh? Well, it's pretty late for that, and we have a pretty good system back home." He glanced around, going along with what they both knew was a lie. "And I don't think the owner of the dump would appreciate you destroying his property."

"But it's just garbage," Dani countered. When her cousin didn't respond, she gave up, too tired from her rampage to talk her way out of it. "I know, I know. It's not a hero-like thing to do."

Danny's face softened then, and he planted his feet on the ground. "What's wrong? Why _are_ you out here?" He wrinkled his nose. "It's kinda creepy here."

Dani wasn't even going to acknowledge what was odd about that statement coming from a ghost, even a half of one. Instead, she moved to sit on an old tire. "I didn't want anybody knowing I was here. But I guess I wasn't really all that quiet."

Danny joined her on the tire, snorting. "You think?"

Dani looked away from him, not much in the mood for humor. Her cousin didn't say anything, didn't press her to talk—he never did, which she was grateful for. He treated her like she was his family, with natural origins and abilities. It gave her time to think.

It took a little time, but she managed to gather her resolve, and before she could change her mind she said, "I ran into Vlad—well, actually, he ran into me." She felt Danny stiffen beside her.

"When?" He asked, an urgent concern flooding his voice. His eyes were on her, searching for injury or wear that he might have initially overlooked.

"The other day, while you were gone." Thinking on it, she'd never really asked what he was doing, and he only said it was something about Clockwork. "He found me and wanted me to tell him where you were." Out of the corner of Dani's eye she saw two glowing green pinpricks, and could only guess that he was angry, being the overprotective hero he was.

"What did you say?" Danny asked.

Dani's own eyes glowed brighter in intensity. "Nothing. I told him he could figure it out himself if he was really so curious—I knew he'd be able to—and then I flew away. But, just like the fruitloop he is, he wasn't happy with that answer and followed me."

Danny started to speak, but then he changed his mind, seemingly not wanting to ask the obvious question. Dani decided to save him the discomfort.

"He eventually attacked me. Started going on about how ungrateful I was, and that without him I wouldn't exist, blah blah blah; typical Vlad garbage." Not unlike the kind she was surrounded by, except maybe that everybody knew about this kind.

"I can see why you'd be upset," Danny remarked.

Dani looked at him, noticing for the first time how pale he was. She hated making him upset, and was contemplating leaving it at that, but he was always honest with her. And she wasn't a very good liar, anyway; at least, not anymore. She shook her head.

"It isn't just that. After a while I stopped him by asking him what he wanted, and he said I knew, because he'd _always_ wanted it, and did he really have to say it. Then I asked why he wanted you to be his child so badly, and why I wasn't ever good enough to be his after I was… born." By now her voice was starting to crack, reliving the painful memory so soon after its creation but she kept going, knowing if she stopped now it would be the end of it.

"I asked if it was because I was a girl, and he said no. He… he said it was because I was a clone. A "half-baked, failure of a clone" were his exact words, I think. Cloning was a mistake he regrets every day because it never would have worked, he said." Her voice finally gave out and her vision blurred, and she stopped, hugging her knees to her chest and trying not to lose the rest of her composure. Her cousin, who wasn't her cousin, not really, let out a tired breath.

"Vlad is a liar," Danny said quietly. "Nothing he says is true, even though he's like us."

Dani blinked to push back the building tears, but it didn't help. "Even a liar tells the truth sometimes." She sniffed, and then looked at her cousin to see if she could gauge what he was thinking. Upon doing so, she saw that he was staring very hard at something off to the right. And he was even more pale. She straightened, something clicking in the back of her mind. "Danny?"

He looked at her again, his eyes dim. Sad. It wasn't the kind of look that sympathy, or even empathy gave. She hadn't seen him in a while, or even knew where he was.

"What's wrong?" She asked, and then remembered it's exactly what her cousin had asked her. "Did something happen?"

Danny shook his head. "It's not important right now."

But it was. "Tell me."

His fists clenched briefly. "It's just something that happened with my parents."

Dani's eyes widened. "They didn't find out, did they?"

Again, Danny shook his head. "No, but they almost did. Or, I almost told them." He stood up suddenly, kicking an old, deflated basketball out of his way. "I almost told them that their son was Phantom. I was so close, too."

"But?" Dani urged. She didn't want to press him—return the favor—but the look she'd seen in that split second before he moved broke her heart.

"But," he continued, "I remembered everything they'd ever said, so I asked different questions to be sure—like, if they'd ever consider Phantom an ally, or even a friend. If they thought that ghosts could be good, too. I even asked if they would be okay if someone were to ever "somehow" get ghost powers."

"And they weren't so thrilled," Dani guessed.

Danny laughed harshly. "That's an understatement. That last answer… the words they used were so brutal I actually felt some of that old fear that they'd figure it out, even after the whole Ghost Gauntlet incident."

Dani wiped one eye with the heel of her hand, unable to hold back a laugh. At her cousin's puzzled look, she almost let out another. "Y'know, I guess you just have to experience something to really understand it."

Danny gave her a shaky smile. "I can't really argue, there."

Something above caught Dani's eye, and she looked up to see a satellite passing over the sky, looking no more than a moving star. She stood, floating up to the top of a garbage heap. Her cousin silently followed her, and when they reached the top, they both sat down, looking up at the twinkling sky.

As they sat there, the two events of Vlad and Danny's parents floated around her head. The two ghost hunters were too set in their ways, unable to see something in ghosts other than evil and the undeniable desire for destruction. And Vlad only reinforced that idea. But the three adults were all friends once, and Dani thought that Vlad must have been different before his transformation. He'd blamed Jack Fenton for turning him into a half-ghost and stealing the woman he loved. But he also felt abandoned. Lonely.

The younger hybrid couldn't suppress a shudder. Before her cousin could comment on it, she blurted out, "why do you think Vlad is the way he is? He thinks his best friends left him alone for all those years, and that by using his powers for his own reasons, he'll be happy." More tears gathered in her eyes. "Do you think that I'll end up like that? Lonely and bitter and making others miserable?"

At this, her cousin frowned, and put a hand on her arm. "Dani," he said, "you are not Vlad. What happened was terrible, but it was an accident my dad never meant to make, and Vlad can't let go of that. He can't accept that my mom loved my dad, not him. I don't care if you consider Vlad your father because he was the one that cloned me. You aren't him."

She looked at him. He looked genuine, his eyes glowing brightly, fervently again. He was always the hero, putting her feelings and problems before his own.

"But how can you know that?" She asked.

In reply, he squeezed her arm reassuringly. "I just do."

Maybe it was the sincerity in his words, or the warm look on his face, but Dani believed him. "Either way, Vlad is _not_ my family. You are. And Tucker, and Sam, and your parents." She winced as soon as the last word came out of her mouth, and her cousin's eyes dimmed a little. "I mean—"

"I know," he said, giving her a shaky smile. "I know."

She placed one hand over his own. "But your parents are wrong too. Whatever happens, Danny, whatever your parents think, you aren't a monster, and you could never be."

"I don't know about that," her cousin said, yet his smile warmed, his eyes a little brighter. "But I appreciate it."

Dani returned it, before raising her free hand and lightly punching him in the arm, ignoring his half-hearted protest, just so he wouldn't think she'd gone soft; even though he'd just seen her crying.

They sat back on the garbage heap, falling silent as they watched the stars. The dump might not have been a very pretty place, but it made up for it with less light pollution in other areas of town, and the sky was fuller than they'd see it in most other places. They both picked out constellations, occasionally pointing to one and going back and forth about their myths. Eventually, Dani looked at her cousin. His face was relaxed and his eyes content, and she wondered if her expression mirrored his, having forgotten their woes that seemed like so far away then, taking comfort in the presence of one another. Thinking, she looked back up.

"You know something? Even when I thought Vlad really did love me, I don't think I was ever as happy with him as I am here."

"You think so?"

"Yeah. I don't know if it's because I just somehow know you're really my family, or whatever else, but I am."

Danny fell silent in thought, and the younger hybrid didn't really expect him to reply. But she didn't mind, because she had another thought.

"Hey, Danny?"

"Hm?"

"Can you make me a promise?"

"What kind?"

"A promise... that you'll take me to space one day? Even if we aren't even in a NASA ship or something."

They weren't even looking at each other now, but Dani could hear his smile when he said, "Yeah. I think I can do that."


End file.
